Mind the doors : long short stories

Reminiscent of the great novelists Italo Calvino and Nikolai Gogol but unswervingly contemporary, MIND THE DOORS brings together award-winning author Zinovy Zinik's finest work to date in these "long short stories".

Zinik is a rare find indeed. His novel, The Mushroom Picker, became a major BBC film in England and garnered a large readership. Some readers will be familiar with Zinik's articles in the Times Literary Supplement while others will know of his reputation in England and especially Russia where his work has met with large audiences and two Russian Bookers.

These stories reveal Zinik at his most touching and, at times, his most unabashed. Visit the notorious Colony Room ("A Pickled Nose") where conversation starts with a tale about Francis Bacon, moves on to the genesis of the bartender's hideous nose and somehow explores Perestroika along the way. "The Notification" takes place in Jerusalem and tells of a bizarre letter-writing scheme that unfolds into a moving testament to love in the face of separation. From the porn shops of London's seedy Soho district to a displaced translator's rotten stomach in the working-class pubs of London, Zinik offers a glimpse of things seen through the eyes of an expatriate Russian Jew that is as fascinating as it is engrossing.

Decidedly playful and inventive-and sometimes incorrigible, Zinik's unique vision opens an excellent adventure that ranks high among the best contemporary writing from the late-Soviet period to the present moment.

Reviews

In these linked stories, set primarily in London, Zinik's (One-Way Ticket) quasi-autobiographical narrator is a Jewish Russian migr . Sometimes he works as a translator, and in his own life he must "translate" a new culture to try to find his place in a complex and rapidly changing community.